Shiftless

Chapter 17

I kept expecting Wolfie to batter down the door and come to get me, so as the hours and then days passed, I became more and more agitated. Even though Quetzalli hadn't coughed up any more information, her presence—no matter how unpleasant—initially gave me hope that I hadn't been entirely written off by Wolfie's pack. I figured their alpha would just need a day or two to calm down and get over the events of Keith's retrieval, which surely meant he'd be here at any minute.

Not that I wanted to draw Wolfie back into this mess, I reminded myself. In fact, the theory behind my betrayal was still sound. I couldn't see any way short of a physical challenge for Wolfie to extract me from my childhood home, and that brought me back around to the whole reason I'd rejected the young alpha so publicly in the first place—I needed Wolfie to think I despised him so he would leave me alone and not get himself killed. In fact, I was so conflicted, between wishing to hear Wolfie's voice and yet dreading what would happen if he did show up, that I was a bundle of nerves by lunchtime.

My second day in Haven, Quetzalli had deigned to shift back into human form, so I followed Cricket's advice and took my roommate on a tour of the pack's land. Yesterday, I'd been so intent on retrieving Keith and on my own role in the drama that I hadn't taken the time to really look at the houses and people we'd passed, but now that I peered more closely, I saw that the village had turned into a strangely skewed version of the community I remembered. During my childhood, lawns were always mowed and houses shone with fresh paint, but now porches were leaning away from dwellings and a pall seemed to hang over Haven.

"This place gives me the creeps," Quetzalli muttered, her words mirroring my thoughts. Yes, Haven had been restrictive when I'd lived here, especially if you were born female, but many people had seemed happy then. I remembered my neighbors singing as they worked when I was a child. There had been barn dances and community dinners. Now, I couldn't quite imagine any of these werewolves laughing or dancing—the Haven werewolves today seemed to be barely managing to carry on their daily lives.

As Quetzalli and I walked through the middle of the green and took in the depressing sights around us, I was startled to hear my wolf chime in her two cents' worth: Look to the alpha. It had been so long since I'd heard so much as a whisper from my wolf that I stopped in my tracks to take in her words. I reached inward, but the lupine consciousness slipped away through my fingers and I almost believed I'd merely imagined her voice in my head. Almost, but not quite.

"What's wrong?" Quetzalli asked, and for the first time since our pack had left, there was a hint of concerned warmth in her voice. The thought flickered through my mind that Quetzalli was really a better companion to have in Haven than either Galena or Oscar since Quetzalli was tough but kind, and her words made me realize that she might actually forgive me one of these days. Echoing my thoughts, the ache in my stomach seemed to dull by a minuscule amount, reducing the pain from a mind-wrenching presence to something I could think past if I focused hard enough. The easing pain even made me smile at my unchosen companion.

"I thought I heard my wolf," I answered her question, then continued. "But you're right, Haven shouldn't be like this. It feels like a ghost town, but with the people still in it." In fact, Haven felt much the way I had when I sought my wolf out in her lair and found her missing, but there was no way the entire community's wolves could be absent.

"Your father," Quetzalli said simply, her words confirming the insight from my wolf. There was more here than met the eye, and I needed to strike to the heart of the matter if I wanted to figure out what was going on.

***

That was easier said than done, though, since Chief Wilder was far too busy to even take meals with his wife and daughter that day and the next. In fact, instead of hunting down the cause of Haven's collective depression, I ended up suffering through an afternoon surrounded by giggling cousins as they fitted me for my wedding dress (groom to be announced). The trauma was lessened only slightly when I realized that Quetzalli was even more shell-shocked by the episode than I was.